Love Story: Splashes Of Red In The Spring

Vanshi sat on the bank, staring at the field of ripe paddy; the grains looked golden and swayed in the whooshing wind of the spring. The beauty of nature along with the brazen wind seemed to arouse different emotions in him today. It was the best time of the year for him, the harvest time. He looked at the dried-up irrigation canals and it seemed to dry up his throat.

He remembered Shally, their marriage would complete twenty years sometime now and only once in the last twenty years could he offer something good, something he wanted to gift her. The crop would get destroyed by the cyclone, spoilt by the storm, or washed away by the floods of the river; there would be no help, no hope of help, yet there would always be an excuse for them to cut down on the weight or not increase the price of the paddy; it saddened him, it exhausted his soul.

In his thoughts, he had made a sketch of Shally on the dust; he looked at her; smiling, her eyes sparkling in the dusty ground, her hair falling off her face like beauty unabashed.

He looked at the serpentine road that passed through the village towards the city; where occasionally trucks used to go with the sand of Mahanadi for construction work across the state of Odisha. He went home, kissed Shally on her forehead, something that she loved the most about him. Shally’s smile swept him away. It was cold inside their hut. They ate some watered rice with mashed potato and green chillies and went to take a nap.
 
He remembered the government official, who had come to do a life insurance scheme for him, on the basis of which they would pay an amount of a crore to his family; he could barely count the zeroes. He remembered his childhood, days where he could see the way agriculture as a process was evolving and the shift from cattle to a tractor to a combined harvester for better yield at lesser cost; but his situation barely improved.

He loved her like never before and left for the night supervision of the crop from the grazing cattle. Shally didn’t want him to go today; to him, she never did. So, he left, with another kiss on her forehead and a soft peck at her lips. She wondered, coyly covering her face; he left. He walked straight to the road. Today again, the truck drivers were driving fast; the night was cold, silent, dreary and consuming. He stood by the road behind the bush, two trucks were coming at full speed and the drivers were busy talking to each other. He looked at them, remembered the art of Shally and walked ahead, the truck crushed him under its feisty wheels; blood splashed on the concrete road; Vanshi looked at the sky, smiling; imagining his Shally, smiling, adored, beautiful.